The Beard in The Mirror

[Paul Franzen]

Long-time AGSers might remember this post by my wife Lizo back in...holy crap, was it really 2006?? Here's where we are now.

Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/385840/
Release trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J3ov5TUfxY
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oharock
Twitter:: https://twitter.com/oharockstudios

Release date:: October 25, 2016

Conception

TestGame was (and is) a game Lizo and I have been working on since we were in undergrad (she's wrapping up her doctoral degree now); it was based on games we used to play over AOL Instant Messenger, wherein one of us would start off by saying something like "You wake up lost in a forest. To the north you see a sparkling stream surrounded by long vines; to the east is a foreboding cave. What do you do?", and the other would respond as though playing a text adventure game--although instead of playing against a bunch of static computer programming, you were playing against a real-life person who could tailor the experience to your exact reactions. The story for TestGame was born from this.

Story

It's about a college-aged boy not-so-coincidentally named Paul, opening his bedroom door one day to discover, instead of the hallway leading to his bathroom, an all-new world of magic, monsters and maidens. I like to think of the tone as a marriage between Sierra and LucasArts, as my wife was raised on the former and myself on the latter, and we take a great deal of inspiration from each. Ultimately the game is about Paul growing up and figuring out his place in the world, all the while solving fun inventory-based puzzles and making dumb jokes about everything. I think it's roughly in the range of 10 (update: more like 6-8) hours long, although it's hard to judge, seeing as I know the answers to all the puzzles.

Development

For years my wife (Lizo) was coding and writing everything herself, with me offering input when I could; but as time went on she had less and less time she could devote to the game, so I started taking over things like proofing text, and then writing text, and then designing puzzles and finally, now, actually programming the game. Our roles have essentially reversed. As part of this transition we decided to finally give the game a more proper title: The Beard in the Mirror.

Now seven years after she created her first screen, here's what we're looking like:

- Story: 100%
- Puzzles: 100%
- Backgrounds: 100%
- Character art: 100%
- Animation: 100%
- Coding: 100%
- Music/Sound: 100%

If ever there was a "blood, sweat and tears" kind of project, this has been it. But it's still moving forward, now more than ever, and I do harbor a small fantasy of going commercial with it on Desura, or another indie-friendly platform.

...Although that said we're still two very slow-paced developers, both having a full-time schedule in addition to our work in Mirror. Look for it to be released sometime (hopefully) in the next seven years.

-------------------------------------------

Update: 12/21/12

Lizo just drew the cook character in Mirror, and he's everything I aspire to be in my life:

Update: 3/19/13

Just hit a big milestone the other day--the game is now fully playable, from opening to epilogue! There's still a lot of placeholder art in there (and it's only now that I'm starting to contact musicians about working on the game's soundtrack), but still. Considering the length of our development process, I'm pretty proud we've made it this far.

5/29/13

Some quick updates to the numbers! Lizo's made a lot of progress in the game's art over the last month, spurred by our new arrangement whereby for every piece of art she completes, I will watch one (1) episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender with her. The first half of the game is now essentially complete, with the second still missing a whole bunch of art assets (and the coding to make them all work).

Meanwhile, I've been playing through the game as it is--which has been a real treat, since in eight years I've never been able to play through the entire game from beginning-to-end before. I'm testing and re-testing, tweaking dialogue, replacing emotes like "*hands over item*" with actual animations of handing items over, and--most noticeably--introducing sound effects and music, mostly from freesound.org and incompetech.com, respectively. (Until now, we only had a couple of original songs, plus some sound effects I recorded in 2006 with a cassette tape recorder. Now, it's not only looking like a videogame, but actually sounding like one, too. It's amazing how much fuller a few well-utilized sounds can make a game feel.

I'm tentatively hoping to release The Beard in the Mirror* by the end of the year, and if we can maintain this pace, there's a real chance that'll actually happen. (I have a lot more free time for game development now that I've left my post at GameCola.) Fingers crossed.

* Oh, and by the way: We did FINALLY settle on The Beard in the Mirror as the final name for the game, after brainstorming through several pages worth of alternative titles (actual examples: "A Grizzled Fate," "2 Mirrors, 1 Fate", and my personal favorite, "King's Quest," but that one was apparently already taken).

Update: 3/4/15

Hah-hah, did I really say we'd release in 2013? Good one, Paul! OP has been updated with updated completion-percentages, and below I announced that we just got Greenlit for Steam! Happy times!

Update: 10/10/16

THE GAME IS FINISHED AND WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE AND IT'S GOING ON STEAM AND I'M FREAKING OUT.

[Fitz]

This looks exceptionally nice, especially the (magic) forest. Is Lizo doing the graphics herself? And why doesn't Paul have a beard? Was it only in those past few years that you started to grow one as a dare in which you refused to shave until Lizo's finished the game?

Also, how fun would it be if The Beard premiered at the same time as the secret project I told you about -- since you appear in both. We could actually make a bundle out of it - Paul Franzen: Double Impact!

[CaptainD]

However long it takes, I'm sure this will be worth the wait!  (This has got to be the oldest "Hey, this project is not actually dead" posts I've ever seen... anywhere, I think!)

[OG]

10 hours + of gameplay??? We could have ourselves a gem here.

[Paul Franzen]

@Fitz: Thank you! Yes, the graphics are basically all Lizo's. So far my contributions in that respect have been: 1) an animation of Paul drinking soda. The rest is all hers (and that's what she's continuing to do, too, in addition to providing me with AGS support because I'm still a little fuzzy on this crazy thing called "coding.") As for the beard--yes, this game's development began in the pre-crisis, beardless Paul era! We try not to talk about those dark days.

Hey, if you can hold off release until around 2020 or so, I think we can make that work!

@CaptainD: Thank you, too! Gosh, I hope so. It's bugging me that it's been taking so long, but part of that is because I stayed so hands-off in its development before, just watching it slowly creep its way out of Lizo's life-goals. I couldn't just let that happen; the game deserves to come out some day.

@OG: That's my best estimate! I haven't tried to play it all the way through (in as much as I can, anyway) in a while, but with four reasonably long, distinct sections, I don't think I'm over-reaching too much.

[dactylopus]

First of all, I like the tenacity.  It's not easy to make both a game and a living.  Good work sticking with it.

As for the game itself, it sounds like fun.  I like the screenshots, they are evocative of that old 90's feeling.  Some of them remind me a little of Kyrandia, Book One.

This is definitely something I'll be looking out for.

[Paul Franzen]

Quick update: I now have a fully playable, beginning-to-end build of the game! (I say "the game" because I'm still not entirely sold on our working title. I guess I'll have to finalize something at some point, though...) Post and percentages have been updated accordingly.

Random question, to give this post a little more meat: ...How important is voice acting to an indie adventure game in 2013? I feel like, to me, it's not a deal-breaker by any means, but I'm not sure what The People At Large think about it.

[Stupot]

Looks interesting Paul.  Can't wait to see the finished product.
For me, voice-acting is a bonus, but by no means a deal-breaker.  I think it's better to play it safe with no VO than to risk it and end up with really bad acting.  Even some top commercial games are let down by poor acting.

[SarahLiz]

Looks interesting Paul.  Can't wait to see the finished product.
For me, voice-acting is a bonus, but by no means a deal-breaker.  I think it's better to play it safe with no VO than to risk it and end up with really bad acting.  Even some top commercial games are let down by poor acting.

Ditto...exactly what I was going to say.  Voices are nice in some games but unless it's top-notch acting and sound quality I think it takes away from the experience of it, and I'll usually end up changing it to text only if that's an option.

The game looks gorgeous, by the way.  Anxious to get my hands on ten hours of that...

[dactylopus]

So glad to hear that this is still ongoing!

Voices are not a necessity, but there are voice actors out there.  Then again, at 10 hours of game play it might be more trouble than its worth.

Congratulations on the milestone, I look forward to the next one!

[CaptainD]

I think VA has become largely expected in commercial indie titles, it's a nice bonus in freeware games.  But as already mentioned it needs to be done well if it's going to actually add to the game.  Just be aware (well, I'm sure you already are!) that adding VA will add a considerable number of weeks to your production time - months, depending on the amount of dialogue in your game, how reliable your voice cast are, and whether you add voicing for everything (not just dialogues).

[ThreeOhFour]

Keep in mind that there have still been a number of commercial AGS titles without voice acting. Time Gentlemen Please is one of the most successful commercial AGS titles ever and had none whatsoever.

[Retro Wolf]

For your graphical style, I think it would be good without voice acting. I'd be happy with bleeps and bloops!

[Fitz]

The current title needs to stay -- in honor of Chuck Norris, who has recently shaved his iconic facial hair.

As for voice-over, I'd say it's not a must. But if you have some epic voice-over material there, I say go for it I do remember you recommending your friend/cousin (I forget) once when we talked about possible VO in Gray, and he was good, indeed.

[Paul Franzen]

Thanks everyone; that's just what I was hoping to hear. I'm always hesitant to include voice acting because, like a few of you mentioned, if it's bad, it can really tank a game, and I don't really have it in the budget to hire professionals. (Plus the fact that--yeah, the game's length kind of got away from us, so adding voice acting would be a pretty big thing at this point.) Maybe if we do release the game commercially and it does well, we can release a talkie version later 

[dactylopus]

I would agree with Fitz, please don't change the title.  It's actually a great title.

[Paul Franzen]

I do like it a lot! My wife's not particularly sold on it, though, and since the game's 50% her work...

I think I might spend some time this weekend brainstorming ideas, to see what I can come up with. I've also had a lot of fun recently playing with sound effects; I never knew before how much richness they add to a game!

[Paul Franzen]

Original post is updated with new numbers and a status update! Spoiler alert: It's all good news.

[CaptainD]

Good news!  Unhidden spoiler!  A cook that looks like LeChuck!  Release by end of the year (hopefully)! It's all good.

[cat]

Sadly the new title is less awesome than the original